


Zuna

by foundCarcosa



Category: Fable (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garth meets his match in a fiery Amazonian woman, and is taught a lesson about the price of restraint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zuna

She’s fiery, more so than anyone Garth has ever met — back home or in Albion — and he’s afraid to look at her. He cuts his eye in her direction instead, catching glimpses.  
Her frowning, full lips. The up-sweeping almond shape of one eye. Cheekbones that would cut glass, a jawline that would cut diamond.

She calls him ‘Glowworm’, and, inexplicably, he lets her.

“Not much of a fighter, are you?” she snorts, crouching to wipe her blade on the mossy ground. There’s balverine blood on her brow, her chest, her forearms — but that, she ignores. The blade, however, must always gleam.

Garth bristles at her good-natured ribbing. “I am a scholar. But that doesn’t mean I cannot defend myself…”

“So I hear there’s a tavern in this Bowerstone,” she continues as if he hadn’t spoken, sheathing the katana and striding away. After a beat, he follows. “You’ll take me to it, of course.”  
She doesn’t ask very many things. It is assumed that she won’t be denied.  
She assumes correctly.

She drinks like a man, holds the liquor down like a lush, and Garth shrinks in his seat, curled around his bottle of not-so-spirits like a… “Glowworm! Come, you must drink something. It’ll loosen you up, and the gods-or-lack-thereof know you need it.”

He bats her away irritably. She plies the drink on him again. He snaps at her, pushes away from the table. The tavern door sizzles when he pushes against it, her cry of dismay and confusion ringing in his ears.

His meeting with Lucien is a resounding success, and time spent in Brightwood becomes something of a vacation. She seeks him out, and sometimes saves a smile and affectionate nudge for him. Her brow darkens subtly when he spurns her, wrapped in his own thoughts, wrapped in his own solitude. In silence she leaves him be, in his room at the top of the tower.

“Who is she?” Lucien asks, and his voice is stormy, petulant. Garth doesn’t like this Lucien, so different from the attentive and worshipful one. Garth keeps silent, guarding his secrets from Lucien much as he’s guarded them from himself, and from her.  
Lucien storms away, infuriated by Garth’s silence, but the next morning he is gallant and gracious, and it’s assumed that Lucien forgets.  
Lucien is never forgetful.

“I have to go,” she says, and steel edges her voice. It cuts like a blade.  
She sees the wound as it blooms fresh and raw, and reaches for him one last time. Should he spurn her again, he’d rue it until the end of his days.

He turns into her embrace, the stone of his visage softening as she cradles his head to her chest.  
“You know, I needed you as much as you needed me,” she chides him, scowling ferociously as her eyes gloss. “We could have been good for each other.”

“You need no one,” Garth counters, quietly. She pushes away from him to look him in the eye. The blaze of her gaze seems to steal the very oxygen from the air and leave him wanting.

“You are a _fool,_ Garth,” she snaps, but beneath the barb is vulnerability, the purest in form, and he lowers his gaze contritely.  
“I have to go back,” she whispers, her forehead touching his. “Something does not bode well for me here. But I know you will miss me, and I would give you something to remember.”

They begin quietly, hesitant hands and darting glances. Her grip tightens as they progress; she unfolds exquisitely, drawing him in with a grace he’d never seen her exhibit, and he is furious with himself for never having looked for it.

He knows when she leaves the bed and dresses, whisper-quiet in the darkness, though he feigns sleep.  
They have said enough. Goodbyes would be stilted, strained. They have said enough…

_“I found her today. She hadn’t gotten far from the Tower before her fate was met. I couldn’t look upon her, because this Zuna was not the one I’d known. Zuna was spirit and life and vibrancy. Death cannot take Zuna away._

_I keep Zuna with me, in the gift she gave. Her strength will be mine, when I gather my things and depart from Castle Fairfax. Her strength will be mine, when I face whatever Lucien throws at me to draw me back in._

_But I still grieve. I fear…  
I fear I have loved too often, yet not soon enough.”_


End file.
